Country-club anxieties vs malaria victims
By Paul Driessen
web posted November 1, 2004
Senator and Mrs. John Kerry are big fans of Rachel Carson,
whose disingenuous book Silent Spring launched the radical anti-
pesticide movement that Terersa Heinz Kerry bankrolls rather
handsomely through her family philanthropies.
THK applauds "important gains" like the "banning of DDT and
other harmful pesticides" as vital to ending the "devastating triple
whammy" that women get from "the chemical soup" they
encounter every day from birth control pills, makeup and
sunblock, and "daily games of golf" on courses that are "perfectly
manicured, thanks to estrogenic pesticides."
"Drift is something we cannot afford when it comes to human
rights," she insists. But her notion of human rights often neglects
the most basic one: life itself. Her concern about speculative
harm from chemicals drifts into intense, misguided opposition to
substances vital to preserving life in her native Africa.
Every year, up to 300 million Africans get malaria; up to 2 million
die. Millions more perish from typhus, tuberculosis, dysentery,
malnutrition, AIDS and other serial killers that they would likely
survive they didn't also have malaria. Other countries – like
India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Brazil, Surinam and Peru
– also have serious, worsening malaria problems.
Kenya, a country of 31 million, lost 34,000 children in 2002
from malaria, and 170 million working days: people who couldn't
work or had to stay home to care for sick family members.
Despite spending nearly $350 million in 2002 on the disease,
Uganda lost 80,000 citizens. Malaria drives Africa's gross
domestic product $12 billion a year below what it would be
were the disease not endemic, and drains some $730 million a
year from India's economy.
Were the United States hammered by malaria to the extent (per
capita) that sub-Saharan Africa is, over 100,000,000 Americans
would be infected every year and 500,000 would die – half of
them children. Agonizing cycles of 104-degree fevers, body-
shaking chills, convulsions, diarrhea and vomiting would leave
many unable to work for days or weeks, others with permanent
brain damage.
Families would be torn apart, our healthcare system
overwhelmed, our economy devastated. We would demand
immediate action to end the epidemic – including widespread
pesticide spraying – and wouldn't tolerate objections from "the
international community."
But we no longer have malaria – thanks in large part to
pesticides. We're wealthy, healthy and well-fed. We can afford
to have country-club anxieties and feel justified in exporting our
newfound environmental idealism.
Through laws, treaties, trade sanctions and aid programs, the
U.S. Agency for International Development, World Health
Organization, UNICEF, EU, wealthy donors like THK and the
environmental activists she supports demand that impoverished,
disease-ridden countries never use pesticides – especially DDT.
Instead, these countries must entrust their citizens' lives to
insecticide-treated bed nets, larvae-eating fish and other
politically correct strategies that together may reduce disease and
death by 40 percent.
Worse, until mid-2004, the WHO, UNICEF and USAID
provided anti-malarial drugs that they knew for years fail as
much as 80% of the time.
Rural areas in these countries don't have clinics with electricity
and clean water, or even decent roads. They cannot possibly
provide nets, drugs or care to hundreds of millions of at-risk
people. Vaccines against malaria are still many years away. The
simple fact is, without pesticides, millions more will die.
Sprayed on the inside walls of mud-and-thatch homes, DDT
keeps 90% of the mosquitoes out for six months or more, kills
any that land on the walls, and irritates the rest, so they don't
bite. Contrary to popular belief, it is safe for people and planet.
DDT's alleged toxicity to wildlife was due to faulty, even
fraudulent lab studies, its being mixed with petroleum distillates,
and discharges of lead, mercury, PCBs and other chemicals into
waterways. No peer-reviewed study ever found it to be
carcinogenic or otherwise harmful to humans.
South Africa and other countries have proven beyond doubt that
using DDT in conjunction with modern artemisinin drugs slashes
malaria disease and death rates by 90% or more. To say poor
countries should be content with a 40% reduction is an
intolerable human rights violation.
But malaria-free activists and countries bullied dozens of poor
nations into signing the Stockholm Treaty, committing them to
phasing out pesticides. They've now eviscerated the exemption
for pesticides to control disease, by warning of aid cuts and bans
on agricultural produce bearing traces of DDT, and emphasizing
rich-country concerns about early lactation, aesthetics (DDT
leaves a white residue on walls), "detectable" DDT in breast
milk, and supposed harm to birds.
"I lost my son, two sisters and two nephews to malaria," says
Ugandan businesswoman Fiona Kobusingye. "Don't talk to me
about birds. And don't tell me a little DDT in our bodies is worse
than the risk of losing more children to this disease. African
mothers would be overjoyed if that were their biggest worry."
Novelist, film producer and PhD molecular biologist Michael
Crichton says "banning DDT is one of the most disgraceful
episodes in the twentieth century history of America. We knew
better, and we did it anyway, and we let people around the
world die, and we didn't give a damn." Until an alternative is
found, said the New York Times, "wealthy nations should be
helping poor countries with all available means – including DDT."
The Washington Times, Chicago Sun-Times, clergy, doctors,
civil rights leaders, Ralph Nader and many others agree.
They recognize that banning pesticides results in millions of
needless, unconscionable deaths. However, even the fitful
progress that their efforts represent is threatened by renewed
pressure from "environmentally sensitive" and "socially
responsible" activists, funded by the billionaire doyenne who
seeks to be the next First Lady and Presidential-Adviser-in-
Chief.
They continue to fret about distant, hypothetical risks from
chemicals and non-organic food. Meanwhile, millions of
malnourished parents and children in malaria-ridden countries are
dying to find out if THK and her husband understand or care
about the real, immediate, life-threatening dangers the world's
poor confront every day.
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial
Equality, senior fellow with the Committee For A Constructive
Tomorrow and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power · Black
Death (www.Eco-Imperialism.com)
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